Annals of the Brithons

Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association, 2019

From the sixth century forward, the early written sources for post-Roman Britain agree on the same dated events. In particular, the dates in chapter sixty-six of the Historia Brittonum coincide with those in Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and are consistent with Gildas’ sequence of post-Roman events. Any variation is due to the Historia author’s incorrect belief that consuls (and not emperors) ruled Rome after 388. This in turn fully explains twenty-four supposedly missing years in chapter sixty-six. Recognition that relative, or ‘stepping stone,’ dating underpins early post-Roman historiography accounts for current chronological inconsistencies.

These three reviews give an idea of changes, and sometimes lack of change, in approaches to Roman Britain as judged by four major texts published in 1981, 1989 and 1995. They are clearly written from a personal point of view, in reasonably polite language, for established journals.

2015

This book, published in 1988, tries to give a very basic outline of the civilian/British features of Roman Britain, but only through archaeology -- that is -- material.

This document provides a stripped down and minimally annotated translation of the ninth century Cambro-Latin 'History of the Britons'. In contrast to most offer version available all the later additions has, so far as they can be identified, been removed.

Journal of Cultural and Social Anthropology, 2020

This article addresses Britain both as geographical and historical entity. Having played second fiddle in the Celtic world and in the Roman Empire, Britain, during the Middle Ages, started to stand on its own two feet. At the eve of the Modern Era, Britain was already a power in the European arena; soon it became an empire, and now runs the risk of going back to square one, becoming, again, a mere group or scattered islands. Let us hope that this will not happen! The Author thanks Mr Rafael Frota for his important suggestions.

Studia Celtica, 2020

The Historia Brittonum remains a textual puzzle because of its variant recensions; printed editions generally present conflated versions of the text. The Harleian Recension is usually thought to represent the version closest to the original. The present approach to its textual history uses cladistics to recognise characteristics shared between recensions. These determine those of ancestral groups and indicate the points at which different recensions split off, demonstrating that the work grew by accretion. The Harleian Recension is shown to be a late development. All existing printed editions of the work are defective: every reading must be based on judging the position of all witnesses on the cladogram. Where the readings of the Chartres and Edmundine Recensions agree against the others, they take precedence. The earliest recoverable form of the text is the recension of 829×30, here termed 'Merminian'.